A few weeks ago we mentioned that the island
of Sri Lanka used to be called Ceylon. What we omitted to say was
that it has had quite a number of other names over the years.

In Sinhalese Sri Lanka means
"resplendent land" but in early times it was just Lanka which
presumably simply meant
"land". It is as Lanka that this island is known in the Hindu
epic the Ramayana. In this tale it is populated by demons and presided over by the
villainous, ten-headed super-demon Ravanna. This fiendish reputation must have
spread beyond the Indian sub-continent for according to Tibetan legend, Padmasambhava, the
9th century wonder-worker, is still alive and subduing demons on the peak called
"the copper-colored mountain" on the island of Lan-Ka.

Taprobana was the name given to Sri
Lanka by Greek and Roman travelers and traders. In an odd correspondence with
Tibetan tradition, Taprobana is said to come from the Greek for
"copper-colored".

This ancient word gave English Taprobane,
the name by which Sri Lanka was known in the 16th and 17th centuries. Milton refers
to the island by this name in his poem Paradise Regained. Speaking of
paradise, according to Muslim legend Adam and Eve were given Sri Lanka as a kind
of consolation prize after they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. This accounts
for the occurrence of Adam in several Sri Lankan place-names. The
most prominent mountain on the island is called Adam's Peak and a string of small
islands between Sri Lanka and the southern tip of India is called Adam's
Bridge.

Arab traders called it Serendip,
Portuguese invaders called it Ceilao, Dutch colonists spelled that Ceylan,
and the imperial British turned this into Ceylon.

In 1754, Horace Walpole invented the word serendipity
which he derived from a Persian fairy-tale called The Three Princes of Serendip.
According to Walpole, the three princes of this story "were always making
discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of".
Thus serendipity is "the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries
by accident".

According to a recent news report from Sri
Lanka, a man was on his way to hospital to receive treatment for dumbness (having no
faculty of speech, that is, not stupidity). His vehicle skidded and he was thrown
out. When rescuers discovered him he had miraculously found his voice. Talk
about serendipity!

Needless to say, when they were informed of
this happy accident, his family was speechless.

Your
Etymological Queries Answered

From Tom and John:

We were just staring at clouds and drinking
beer and we wondered what the etymology of the term spic and span was. After
a violent exchange, we decided to contact the experts. They weren't available, so we
contacted you guys. John thought that maybe it came about because in the old days
most of the cleaning was done by [what were derogatorily known as] spics. I
thought maybe it came about because in the old days most of the cleaning was done by spans.

Ha ha ha, very funny! Now why is it
that we get so many queries about racial and ethnic slurs? We also get an amazing
number of questions about homosexual slang. By the way, Tom and John... Oh, never
mind.

The obvious reason that the experts were not
available is simply because they defer to us!

The term spic, a derogatory term
used to refer to Hispanics, arose among English speakers in Central America around 1900.
Though many now assume that it is a contraction of Hispanic, its original
form was spiggoty - a mocking imitation of "no speaka de
English".

The spelling spick and span is
preferred, although in America the cleaning product called Spic 'n' Span is
probably to blame for the popularity of the spic spelling here. The original spick
spelling reveals that there is no relation between this phrase and the ethnic slur. Spick
and span, in fact, dates back to at least the 16th century when Samuel Pepys
(pronounced "peeps", by the way) used it in his famous diary. Prior to
that it was span-new. What exactly does that mean? Well, a span
was a wood chip, and such chips were used to make spoons (yes, span and spoon
are related). Something that was span-new was a freshly cut chip or,
metaphorically, anything as new as a freshly cut chip. This term dates from at least
1300 in the metaphorical sense. Spick was added in the 16th century, though
why is not exactly known - perhaps for the alliterative sense. A spick
was a spike or nail, and something that was spick and span was neat and trim.
The "clean" sense appears to have arisen only recently.

There's also the term brand-span-new (early
19th century), the brand in that referring to something fresh off the anvil or
forge. Spank-span-new (late 18th century), an intensified form of span-new,
combined with brand-span-new, gave us brand-spanking-new.

From Stephen Day:

Are you able to offer an explanation of the
phrase all agog (meaning "in excited anticipation")? My dictionary
(Chambers) only says "origin obscure". I'm all agog to know the
answer.

Agog is thought to come from the
French phrase en gogue "having a good time". English borrowed it as
agog because that's what en gogue sounded like to English ears. When
English took the phrase in the 15th century, it did so with the meaning eager,
presumably as in "eager to have a good time".

The French word gogue
"merriment" seems to have changed to gogo, though it retained its
original meaning. The phrase à gogo now means merrily as
well as eager. There is also the phrase vivre àgogo
"to live like a lord" or "in
abundance". This latter phrase apparently gave à gogo the
added meaning of "in abundance" or "galore".

The story of how English acquired go-go
(as in go-go dancer and go-go boots) goes like this: a French night
club owner named his club after the film Whiskey Galore which, in French, was Whiskey
à Gogo. An American night club in Washington D.C. borrowed the
French club's name, thinking that gogo sounded an awful lot like English go
reduplicated, with a hip and cool air about it. The owner of this club installed
cages where dancers in the newly-fashionable mini-skirts and boots performed the latest
dances. This inpired Smokey Robinson's hit song Going to à Gogo and
the rest is history.

...our soapbox where we vent our
spleen regarding abuses of the English language.

Reverse Psychology

"Don't bother trying [product name].
It's probably too sophisticated for the likes of you." In the loathsome,
proto-simian world called "marketing", this form of advertising is known as
"reverse psychology". Presumably then, to say "Do try [product name],
you are sophisticated enough for it" would be called "psychology".
What piffle!

We can see why "Don't buy our
product" might be called "applied psychology" but not "reverse
psychology". After all, no other academic discipline has a reverse form.
We don't speak of "reverse chemistry" or "reverse geography".
When we are told that 6 - x = 2 and then deduce that x = 4, this is called algebra, not
"reverse arithmetic".

After reading Judith's comment in Issue 44 concerning the Hungarian name for Germany,
I recalled that the Russian (I'm a Russian Linguist) adjective for things
German is Nemyetski (masc.) and Nemyetskaya (fem.), while the name
for the country of Germany is Germania. I find the similarity to Hungarian
interesting.